Our inspiring, highly-trained volunteer tutors work in primary and secondary schools in London with underachieving, disadvantaged young people in Years 4 to 11.

Over a 12-week programme, they tutor the same group of 2-3 pupils in English or maths for 60-90 minutes a week. They also work to build students’ confidence and resilience during standalone sessions and using proven techniques woven into our curriculum.

Our workplace partners, including HSBC and the EY Foundation, also offer inspiring workshops to our schools where pupils can get career advice, learn about money and finances, develop their communication skills and more. These are complementary and optional sessions we can include into our programmes.

The students we work with are from low-income backgrounds, and are often underachieving. We don’t specialise in high need SEN, new arrival EAL or high behavioural needs, but many are low in confidence and find it difficult to engage. We tailor our programme to each pupil’s needs.

Our programme is an effective and worthwhile use of Pupil Premium funding.

We have a proven track record of more than doubling pupils’ academic progress on average.

Equally important is our ever-increasing work to build confidence, resilience and self-worth, giving our students the skills and growth mindset they need for the future. It provides skills to learn beyond the period of the programme, and helps improve attendance, engagement and behaviour.

Find out more about our impact

Our tutors come from a variety of backgrounds, but more than three-quarters are sixth-form or university students, often from the same schools or similar backgrounds to the pupils they work with. We have volunteers from many other walks of life too, including people who are working or retired, and employees of our corporate partners.

When choosing our volunteers, we look for good academic grades in English or maths and the inspirational ability to raise confidence and a love of learning in our pupils.

Volunteering with Team Up has huge benefits for our volunteers as well as pupils. For example, it gives sixth-formers valuable experience for university applications, plus opportunities to be mentored by professionals in fields they’re interested in.

We have an excellent team of programme managers and facilitators – many of whom are former teachers – who liaise with schools, support and train our volunteers, and develop our outstanding curricula.

Our programme leads are there with tutors every time they come to your school and provide an ongoing overview of the programme for the school following each session. They’re available to sit in on tutoring sessions to support both pupils and tutors.

At start, mid and end of the programme, your programme lead will take you through the programme in more detail, sharing the data we’ve collected with recommendations to help you share the impact of Team Up with your team.

We choose our volunteers with great care, looking for strong academic credentials, belief in our values, and ability to engage well with pupils. We have a stringent recruitment process, involving interviews, reference checks, and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and identity checks.

All Team Up volunteers are thoroughly trained. This starts with extensive induction training. Then, during the course of the programme, tutors have individual coaching and observations with their programme lead. After every session, tutors come together with their programme lead to discuss the session in shared learning groups.

We work with socio-economically disadvantaged primary and secondary school pupils in Key Stages 2, 3 and 4, Years 4 to 11, who are at risk of underachieving.

We work with schools to identify pupils who are on Pupil Premium, free school meals or have other indicators of disadvantage such as EAL, refugee status, or being from single parent/guardian households.

One of our key focal points is on underachieving Key Stage 3 and 4 pupils, especially in Years 9, 10 and 11. Evidence shows that deprived and underachieving pupils get the most benefits from tutoring during these transition years.

Our programme managers (trained teachers) have designed our tried-and-tested curriculum with advice from outside independent educational experts. They continually update it based on feedback.

We provide all the resources tutors and pupils need. These include lesson plans with structured recaps, explanations, modelling and answers. We also provide fortnightly topic tests through which pupils receive more formal feedback and make improvements.

Woven throughout our sessions are activities, games and reflections designed to build confidence, resilience and a growth mindset in our pupils. Our tutors are trained in techniques to develop these, using them throughout the programme.

Week 1: Set-up
With our guidance, you choose the pupils you’d like to take part and send their information to Team Up.

Week 2: Kick-off and baseline
We come into school to share a kick-off presentation with pupils to explain our programme. We also do our baseline assessment with your pupils, so we can identify their strengths and areas for improvement and develop a tailored programme for them.

Weeks 3-10: Tuition
We deliver interactive, fun and engaging maths or English sessions, alongside activities and exercises to improve your pupils’ confidence and resilience.

Week 7: Mid-term review
We deliver a mid-term report analysing pupils’ progress so far, and meet to discuss it with you.

Week 11: Progress test
We assess your pupils to see how much progress they’ve made.

Week 12: Final session
We share progress with your pupils, review material covered and celebrate their successes!

Yes it is. We delivered our first online tutoring sessions in 2020, partly in response to the Covid-19 crisis. While most of our programmes are face-to-face, there are options to have online sessions with tutors, with programme leads still managing the sessions in school.

Our online model replicates many features of our normal model, but with some important adaptations.

Our tutors deliver our online programme using the Vedamo tutoring platform. This automatically records all sessions for safeguarding purposes, has interactive features like a whiteboard and allows for live small-group teaching, support and feedback. Our programme managers monitor all online tutoring sessions.

We work with a maximum of 2 pupils per group online. Pupils can be at home or in school.

Of course – download our safeguarding policy below:

We know teachers are extremely busy people! We work hard to make sure our programme is as easy as possible to set up and run in your school.

One of our programme managers will work with your school to take care of delivering the programme from start to finish. All our programme managers are experienced and qualified teachers. Your programme manager will be on hand during every tutoring session, managing and supporting tutors and pupils. We also take care of recruiting, interviewing and DBS checking all tutors.

We provide all the resources you’ll need for a smooth set-up. These include guidance on how to select pupils, parent consent letter templates and guidance on how to set up technology such as school computers, if you’re running an online programme.

We regularly survey school staff, as well as pupils and tutors, to see how things are going throughout the 12 weeks of the programme. You can also speak with your programme manager any time. We’ll act on any feedback you have immediately.

We ask a member of school staff to be our school coordinator. They’ll be the main point of contact for Team Up. They’ll support with programme set-up, pupil attendance and engagement where needed, and be accessible during sessions.

We start by asking pupils to do a baseline test right at the beginning of the programme. At the end of the 12 weeks, we do an end-of-term test to see how far they’ve progressed. We do fortnightly topic tests to support consolidation during the programme too.

We also measure increases in pupils’ confidence, resilience and purpose during the programme using questionnaires for pupils, schools and tutors. This triangulation gives us a clear picture of the difference we’re making to each and every pupil. We also measure attendance, effort and engagement in team work.

Our tutors and programme leads will give you weekly reports on pupil engagement, topic test attainment and pupil strengths and weaknesses. We’ll also provide attendance data and any logistical updates.

We’ll give you a more formal impact report mid-way through the programme and then again at the end of term. These will detail and explain pupil progress, attendance, engagement, survey feedback and suggest next steps for pupils.

Pupils (and tutors) can work with us for 1 programme lasting 12 weeks. Or they can continue with another programme, depending on what works for them.

Our 12-week programme costs £200 per pupil for schools. We typically work with groups of 20 students minimum. We subsidise the rest of the cost, which is approximately a further £350 per pupil with donations and sponsorship from foundations, grants and corporate supporters.

In some locations we may have additional financial support to reduce the £200 charge to schools further. Please contact us to see what may be possible.

Volunteering with Team Up is a fantastic way for academically-strong sixth-formers to gain valuable skills and experience and make their university or job applications stand out.

You and they can find out more about volunteering by visiting our page for sixth-formers.

We can help you get the word out to your sixth-form students about volunteering as tutors. We can deliver presentations or assemblies, run stalls at open days or fairs, provide posters and offer email templates to help you share the opportunity. Contact Femke de Vries on femkedevries@teamup.org.uk to find out more.

We work with schools across London and the South of England. We work with primary schools, secondary schools, and with young people’s groups and fellow charities such as AllChild, SYLA and Peabody Trust.

If your school is interested in running a programme with us, or you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch with our Head of Programmes, Pippa Coleman, on pippa.coleman@teamup.org.uk or call 07548 399 635.